This week, my Transformational Leadership class read and discussed C.S. Lewis’s famous essay “The Inner Ring.” In 1944, C. S. Lewis first delivered this material as the Memorial Lecture at King’s College, London. A year later the temptation of the Inner Ring was a major theme in Lewis’s 1945 novel That Hideous Strength, which was the concluding title in his three-volume Space Trilogy. In 1949, the lecture was revised for publication as part of Lewis’s wonderful book The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses.
In the essay, Lewis argues that our world is filled with Inner Rings, small groups that for whatever their reasons create a dividing line between insiders and outsiders. Inner Rings may be formal or informal. They normally have boundaries that are policed, whether implicitly or explicitly. They develop their own internal logics, traditions, and expectations. Inner Rings are not necessarily bad in principle. Think of a small leadership team, or a committee, or a baseball bullpen or football special teams unit. However, Inner Rings can easily devolve into cliquish or snobbish patterns. More important for Lewis than the existence of Inner Rings is how our desires are formed (or malformed) in proximity to such groups.
The section of “The Inner Ring” that lands strongest with me is Lewis’s discussion of scoundrels—a word I told my students we don’t use nearly enough. I’ll quote the relevant section.
It would be polite and charitable, and in view of your age reasonable too, to suppose that none of you is yet a scoundrel. On the other hand, by the mere law of averages (I am saying nothing against free will) it is almost certain that at least two or three of you before you die will have become something very like scoundrels. There must be in this room the makings of at least that number of unscrupulous, treacherous, ruthless egotists. The choice is still before you: and I hope you will not take my hard words about your possible future characters as a token of disrespect to your present characters.
And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”
And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.
Lewis is describing the role that the disordered desire to be on the inside of the Inner Ring, and perhaps the sinful tendencies of certain Inner Rings themselves, play in our moral degradation. He is describing potential baby steps on the road to “scoundreldom” and warning us to avoid them.
What strikes me most about this section, and really the entire essay, is how our moral and spiritual decline is so often incremental; at times, perhaps even imperceptible. I’m not saying that we don’t sometimes throw caution to the wind in the spur of the moment and make terrible decisions. We obviously do. But even in such cases, it’s often the case that a thousand little compromises have malformed us for the moment of spiritual catastrophe.
Consider the sin of adultery. Like perhaps many of you, I know numerous Christians and other people of otherwise general moral decency who violated their wedding vows. I’m not aware of a single case where one of them would say they one day simply up and decided to cheat on their spouse. Rather, they would say that many seemingly smaller bad decisions paved the way for the more significant failure. There were indulged fantasies. Minor flirtations. Unaddressed frustrations with the irritating tendencies of a spouse. Lingering over questionable content that ought best be minimized or, even better, avoided altogether. Occasional indulgence in pornography. A dull devotional life. Misleading or vague statements to accountability partners.
Often enough, there was a slow-motion snowball effect. The fantasies intensified gradually in their frequency and/or content. Flirtations became increasingly more intense. Frustrations with spouses devolved into resentment. Questionable content was sought out more often that it was stumbled upon. Indulgence in porn became less occasional, and perhaps even frequent. Prayer and devotional Bible reading became sporadic at best. There was no more time for accountability. And then . . . it happened.
I don’t remember where I first heard this phrase (perhaps D. A. Carson?), but for many years I’ve been haunted by the idea that we will never drift into holiness. There is no cruise control in the Christian life. If you are cruising, you are drifting. And we only drift in one direction: away from faithfulness to the Lord. If you drift far enough, you might just wake up one day and realize that you’ve become a scoundrel. And as Lewis so ably reminds us, often our desire to be part of an Inner Ring, or our participation in an Inner Ring, plays a key supporting role in our spiritual drift.
So, I want to encourage you today to monitor your desire to be on the inside of the Inner Ring. I write this as one who has been drawn in by this desire many times over the course of my life. Some of the dumbest things I’ve ever said or done, and certainly many of the most wicked things I’ve ever thought, were fueled by this desire. Perhaps your story is similar. I think most of us are tempted by the longing to be on the inside, at least periodically or in certain contexts. It is precisely because this temptation is so, well, natural, that we must guard against it so intentionally.
Writing Update
I’m working on three writing projects right now, all of which are due in the next 30 days. I’m wrapping up final edits to the second edition of The Baptist Story, along with my co-authors Tony Chute and Michael Haykin. It has been fun to revisit this material a decade later, though candidly it has been daunting at times to try and describe recent Baptist history in a way that avoids being a cheerleader or a cynic. Lord willing, the second edition will be out in January 2026.
I’m also writing a short narrative history of Christian higher education for (mostly) new faculty who are just beginning their first job at a Christian college or university. That essay will be a chapter in a book edited by my good friends Donny Mathis and Jacob Shatzer. The final project I’m working on is a scholarly paper and eventual journal article discussing Carl F.H. Henry’s views on religious liberty. I will read the paper at the fall meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society and it will be published, Lord willing, in a themed issue of The Southwestern Journal of Theology dedicated to religious liberty.
Media Opportunities
Speaking of religious liberty, I recorded a short video for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission that was pushed out on social media this week. In the video, I discuss the historic Baptist commitment to a free church in a free state. (I asked the videographer if he could make it where I don’t sound like a redneck. He informed me that he is not a miracle-worker. This is what all the videographers tell me. Frankly, I expect more from their profession.)
I was also interviewed by the Deseret News about Kamala Harris’s religious beliefs. I was quoted in two different articles. The first article was on Harris’s views of religious liberty, which I find deeply troubling. The second article was on Harris’s personal religious affiliations, which I find fascinating for historical reasons, but do not affirm. Even if you disagree with my opinions, I hope you find the articles themselves to be informative.
Finally, I recorded an interview with Andy Schmitt for his YouTube channel Orthodoxy. The topic was “Should Protestants And Catholics Partner For Political Ends?” We discussed the idea of “cobelligerency,” which is strategic, limited partnership in matters of shared conviction about social ethics. For many Protestants and Catholics, the most important shared convictions relate to the sanctity of human life, biblical anthropology, traditional views of marriage and family, and religious liberty. Spoiler alert: I’m in favor of cobelligerency.